Tumbleweed Whenever you think of the Wild West of America, you think of cowboy movies and tumbleweed, perpetually tumbling around a desolate landscape.
Salt lowers the freezing/melting point of water, so in both cases the idea is to take advantage of the lower melting point. Ice forms when theÂ­ temperature of water reaches 32 degrees Fahrenheit (0 degrees Celsius). When you add salt, that temperature drops: A 10-percent salt solution freezes at 20 F (-6 C), and a 20-percent solution freezes at 2 F (-16 C). On a roadway, this means that if you sprinkle salt on the ice, you can melt it. The salt dissolves into the liquid water in the ice and lowers its freezing point.
The water in Bowl 2 approximates the same concentration of salt found in the oceans water. Salt is the key to understanding our experiment's results! The more salt in the water, the lower the temperature has to be for the water to freeze. This is why the ocean doesn't freeze. There's too much salt in it. Bodies of water located farther inland like islands and rivers have less salt in them, allowing them to freeze when the temperature drops to 0 degrees Celsius.